I have to admit it.
I'm a fraud.
I learned most of my Russian cooking from a truly Soviet girl. Komsomol member, former factory worker, daughter of Udmurt peasants, Nadya taught me much of what I know on the hotplate in the tiny entryway to our Soviet university dormitory blok. Fried potatoes with onions and garlic. Soup made with (yes) potatoes and onions and garlic. I watched her and my other Siberian roommate, Liuda, bake chicken tabaka or assemble the occasional elaborate salat olivier for a special meal, but as a committed lacto-ovo vegetarian, I didn't even partake of those beautiful holiday tables.
What I mostly learned was how to make bliny -- Russian pancakes, so light and delicate and buttery that even when they were tiny my children could consume 5 each. They begged for Russian pancakes most mornings, and I made them almost every weekend. Rolled up and filled with jam for my son, American-style (drenched in real maple syrup) and cut into bite-size pieces for my daughter. I ruined them for American pancakes, which especially in diners seem to soak up the (fake) maple syrup and then sit heavily in the stomach for several hours. With Russian pancakes we could take the leftovers hiking -- they were even delicious cold, and we could always eat more, having easily recovered from the gluttony of 7 a.m.
Reading Anya von Bremzen's fantastic book on food in the Soviet Union, I realized what I've been making all these years: bliny na skoruiu ruku. Quick blini, not yeast blini. Who had the time or energy, or ingredients, in a Soviet dormitory, to proof the yeast, make the batter, let it rise overnight (in the tiny refrigerator, I suppose, or on the windowsill to take advantage of the cold coming through the panes of glass...), to whip up egg whites and put it all together in the morning?
Even when we had more leisure time, like when Nadya came to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1999 to see me and meet my future American husband (visiting from the U.S.), she still fried up stacks of bliny na skoruiu ruku. I watched carefully and memorized the recipe, though for her it wasn't so much a recipe as a feeling: pouring in some of this and tossing in some of that. About 1 1/2 cups of milk to a cup of flour; add a little salt, a little sugar and even some baking powder if I have it; fry in butter and serve with jam or even applesauce. (Why do I have a memory of having applesauce in that apartment on Vasilevsky Island which I rented for the summer from my friend Vasya and his mother, the year I took students to study in St. Petersburg? Must be from later, in my own American kitchen, once the children had arrived.) That summer my future-husband and I were doing research for an article on post-Soviet women that among others featured Nadya and her post-Soviet fate. Rereading the article last week while teaching about the famous "double burden" of Russian and Soviet life, I found it to still be compelling (despite one egregious editing error that you will notice if you go read it). Interviewing Nadya while eating her pancakes is still one of my most pleasant memories of that summer.
But now that I'm planning my Russian cuisine course, I will be making further forays into the ups and downs of Russian and Soviet cooking, including plumbing my own memory of what I was served back in the (Soviet) day. My 10-day visit to Kemerovo in January of 1989, despite the problems of defitsit, resulted in groaning tables, all manner of vegetarian kotlety, and my desperate flight back to cold and hungry Moscow from all that hospitality. (I dubbed the experience bezzhalostnoe siberskoe gostepriimstvo -- merciless Siberian hospitality.)
And I'll try to earn some cred so that I'm not such a fraud. (I'll need to do due diligence to prove that an American can be knowledgeable about the Russian kitchen...) The yeast pancakes this morning were yummy, if a bit yeasty. But next time I'll lay in some caviar and semi-sec Soviet champagne, and maybe they'll be even tastier.
I'm a fraud.
I learned most of my Russian cooking from a truly Soviet girl. Komsomol member, former factory worker, daughter of Udmurt peasants, Nadya taught me much of what I know on the hotplate in the tiny entryway to our Soviet university dormitory blok. Fried potatoes with onions and garlic. Soup made with (yes) potatoes and onions and garlic. I watched her and my other Siberian roommate, Liuda, bake chicken tabaka or assemble the occasional elaborate salat olivier for a special meal, but as a committed lacto-ovo vegetarian, I didn't even partake of those beautiful holiday tables.
What I mostly learned was how to make bliny -- Russian pancakes, so light and delicate and buttery that even when they were tiny my children could consume 5 each. They begged for Russian pancakes most mornings, and I made them almost every weekend. Rolled up and filled with jam for my son, American-style (drenched in real maple syrup) and cut into bite-size pieces for my daughter. I ruined them for American pancakes, which especially in diners seem to soak up the (fake) maple syrup and then sit heavily in the stomach for several hours. With Russian pancakes we could take the leftovers hiking -- they were even delicious cold, and we could always eat more, having easily recovered from the gluttony of 7 a.m.
Reading Anya von Bremzen's fantastic book on food in the Soviet Union, I realized what I've been making all these years: bliny na skoruiu ruku. Quick blini, not yeast blini. Who had the time or energy, or ingredients, in a Soviet dormitory, to proof the yeast, make the batter, let it rise overnight (in the tiny refrigerator, I suppose, or on the windowsill to take advantage of the cold coming through the panes of glass...), to whip up egg whites and put it all together in the morning?
Even when we had more leisure time, like when Nadya came to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1999 to see me and meet my future American husband (visiting from the U.S.), she still fried up stacks of bliny na skoruiu ruku. I watched carefully and memorized the recipe, though for her it wasn't so much a recipe as a feeling: pouring in some of this and tossing in some of that. About 1 1/2 cups of milk to a cup of flour; add a little salt, a little sugar and even some baking powder if I have it; fry in butter and serve with jam or even applesauce. (Why do I have a memory of having applesauce in that apartment on Vasilevsky Island which I rented for the summer from my friend Vasya and his mother, the year I took students to study in St. Petersburg? Must be from later, in my own American kitchen, once the children had arrived.) That summer my future-husband and I were doing research for an article on post-Soviet women that among others featured Nadya and her post-Soviet fate. Rereading the article last week while teaching about the famous "double burden" of Russian and Soviet life, I found it to still be compelling (despite one egregious editing error that you will notice if you go read it). Interviewing Nadya while eating her pancakes is still one of my most pleasant memories of that summer.
But now that I'm planning my Russian cuisine course, I will be making further forays into the ups and downs of Russian and Soviet cooking, including plumbing my own memory of what I was served back in the (Soviet) day. My 10-day visit to Kemerovo in January of 1989, despite the problems of defitsit, resulted in groaning tables, all manner of vegetarian kotlety, and my desperate flight back to cold and hungry Moscow from all that hospitality. (I dubbed the experience bezzhalostnoe siberskoe gostepriimstvo -- merciless Siberian hospitality.)
And I'll try to earn some cred so that I'm not such a fraud. (I'll need to do due diligence to prove that an American can be knowledgeable about the Russian kitchen...) The yeast pancakes this morning were yummy, if a bit yeasty. But next time I'll lay in some caviar and semi-sec Soviet champagne, and maybe they'll be even tastier.
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| I'm excited that I still have my old, mildewing version of Book of Good and Healthy Food to draw on for my course! |
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